When did integrated circuits first enter your life?

[NivagSwerdna]

Henry's radio

I lived in a rural location the SW but once a year would have a family trip to London.... I remember the trips to Henry's on the Edgeware road... in fact... I remember a particular trip where we went clutching a copy of ETI read to get the parts for the Metal Detector project.... ah nostalgia!

[JohnPen]

Valve day memories included Selenium rectifiers rather bulky

[Rerouter]

Too young to have seen the transition, so taken literally, at the age of 6 when I stood on an upside down dip package for some 74 series logic IC that my neighbor was using in a project,

[NiHaoMike]

First one I have seen was the RAM upgrade (a mere 4MB!) for the family computer, first one I experimented with was a 4011 in a digital logic education kit.

[Mecanix]

First ever IC Love Story for me was an Arduino roughly 10 years ago (given to me by someone who've had no idea what it was). It had me loading up its IDE and blinking its onboard LED at 1Hz. I nearly past out of boredom learning that and watching it blinking I've never touched it ever again. It was instantly sent on to the Great Rubbish Bin.

Fast fw in time; I now have an inventory of roughly 60~70 different kind of ICs that were recently brought in to prototype with :/

[retrolefty]

For me it was 1970, my first job after serving in the USAF as a teletype repairmen. The job was as a field engineer supporting stock brokerage quote machines. The various aged equipment ranged from transistor logic, RTL, DTL, and TTL chips. I bought a copy of one of Don Lancaster's cookbook to bone up and was off and running in no time.

Good memories 

[bsfeechannel]

In my case, I still have the very IC that entered my life (how dramatic). Back then we used to socket ICs and bend the unused pins under the case.

[gbaddeley]

I’m a bit over 1/2 way. Played a lot with valves radios too in my teens, & fixed TVs for pocket money. First transistors : OC71 & OC72 germanium. First IC : OM802 (?) similar to 555, and UA709 (older than 741). ca. 1973

[JohnPen]

First Phototransistor OC71 with black paint scraped away. Semi equivalent to an OCP71.  Those were the days